What's Changed

• docs: correct the Python Customize Mode section IDs and action list by @examon in #2264
• Add history.clearContext and Tool.isTerminal across all SDKs by @examon in #2129
• fix(java): preserve MCP permission extension data by @rinceyuan in #2276
• Update @github/copilot to 1.0.79-5 by @github-actions[bot] in #2282
• Update @github/copilot to 1.0.79-6 by @github-actions[bot] in #2287
• SDK, Runtime: Recover JSON-RPC frames containing unpaired UTF-16 surrogates by @Chuxel in #2283
• Add managed permission settings to session startup by @joshspicer in #2139
• Skip untyped internal properties in C# codegen by @stephentoub in #2298
• Update @github/copilot to 1.0.79-9 by @github-actions[bot] in #2299
• Update @github/copilot to 1.0.79 by @github-actions[bot] in #2306
• Consolidate SDK GitHub releases by @stephentoub in #2305
• [SDK/Factories] Make The Agent Factories Surface Match The Wire Contract by @MRayermannMSFT in #2309
• Add rewind support across all SDKs by @stephentoub in #2321
• [java] Add linux-x64 implementation of in process Copilot CLI by @edburns in #2301
• [Java] Fix java publish to maven by @edburns in #2324
• test(java): skip linux runtime tests on other platforms by @edburns in #2325
• Fix codegen for internal runtime schemas by @stephentoub in #2331
• [SDK/Factories] Add argsSchema To The Factory Authoring Surface by @MRayermannMSFT in #2315
• Add built-in plugin directory support by @lutzroeder in #2330
• sdk: Forward decisionContext on permission replies across languages by @aymenfurter in #2294

New Contributors

• @Chuxel made their first contribution in #2283
• @lutzroeder made their first contribution in #2330
• @aymenfurter made their first contribution in #2294

Full Changelog: v1.0.9...v1.0.11

The best developers don’t stop building when they close the laptop. In an age of agents, your hobby might be the most irreplaceable thing about you.

Have you ever heard of Pan de Jamón? I hadn’t—until I met Mike, one of the best developers I ever worked with.

This isn’t a “here’s what bread taught me about life” post. It’s an observation that might bring some light to an AI outlook that can feel pretty dark sometimes.

What made Mike stand out wasn’t only his personality or skillset. It was that he went home and baked Venezuelan Christmas bread.

Ode to the Hobbyist

And it wasn’t only Mike. Most developers I remember, I remember by their hobby.

Just off the top of my mind:

• The genius printing parts on a 3D printer he built himself
• The audiophile building a sound system for a perfect pitch
• The home-automation engineer who wired his house with PLCs
• The architect drilling a water well in his own backyard
• The rotary-engine-obsessed designer with a Mazda RX-7
• The 3D specialist restoring a surf van with his son

None of this is on their LinkedIn profile. None of it pays. And it’s the most interesting thing about them.

I’ve spent a long time in enterprise software, working with developers who write code that runs critical infrastructure.

The pattern is so consistent it stopped being a pattern and started looking like a characteristic: The best developers I’ve worked with don’t stop building when they close the laptop. They go home and make something else—bread, sound, water, vans. They just stop getting paid for it.

What Agents Don’t Have

We live in interesting times. Agents are now colleagues that cooperate in writing our code. And companies are considering, or actively pursuing, what that means for headcount. More and more developers are asking: “Will there be a job for me? How do I compete?”

But here’s what agents don’t do. They don’t drive home and pick up a task that’s not on a kanban board. They don’t lose a Saturday to a bad weld or experiment with different kinds of dough and oven temperatures. They don’t bake a loaf that fails three weekends in a row and quietly absorb the lesson that some processes can’t be hurried, no matter how clever the idea. They don’t ferment, restore, dig, solder, role-play or rebuild.

Agents have no Saturday. They have no irrational, over-obsessed curiosity we call a hobby.

Hobbies are unpressured, unstructured, unscheduled—messy mindbenders. That’s what agents miss. And this unpaid labor is where a lot of real learning happens. The kind that doesn’t show up in the sprint demo, but shows up in great architecture decisions, clever unit tests and surprising solutions.

Don’t Give Up on Your Hobbies

If you’re a developer wondering what to do with the noise about AI replacing you, here’s an honest answer: Look beyond the code. Lean harder into the things you make that nobody pays you for.

Your hobby isn’t a side-quest to the main game of being a developer. It’s not only about balance, self-care or free time. It’s where you keep growing the part of yourself that an agent can’t copy. Where character is formed. Where unconstrained thinking is allowed and you explore solutions only you have to justify.

That wonderful waste of a Saturday is the perspective that breaks through on a mundane Monday morning.

The coffee chat “what did you do over the weekend?” might be the context that wins over the agent whose most coffee-related moment is running a brew command in the terminal.

So bake the bread. Dig the well. Restore the van. Roll the dice.

Keep building without getting paid. That’s the work that keeps you irreplaceable.

Probably the best piece of advice I ever received is to take time to gain perspective. I received this advice from a sophomore, my cadre corporal at The Citadel, when I was a knob during that first week of military training. I was frustrated at myself. For whatever reason, most of what I remembered (or thought I remembered) from marching band was opposite what I was being taught. The Citadel had and still uses the US Army instructions on marching, and none of it matched what was in my brain. I kept making mistakes and kept getting angrier and angrier at myself.

My cadre corporal, Tim Harrenstein, pulled me aside after one bout where my frustration became clearly visible. He had me do something he knew I could do: recite the phonetic alphabet. Then he pointed out that others were struggling with that task which I found easy. He had me think about the fact that all of my classmates were getting corrected in one way or another. I wasn’t alone. I was just struggling a bit more with the marching than my platoon mates. My anger at myself was only going to make succeeding more difficult. What he was doing was helping me gain perspective.

I’ve applied that lesson throughout life, especially in technology operations. For instance, it’s easy to get focused on a symptom. I’ve seen situations where a team troubleshooting a problem zeroes in on a symptom and works to fix it. They apply a change but the result isn’t consistent. The symptom isn’t eliminated, but it doesn’t show up every time, either. They double-down and apply more and more changes, leading to more inconsistency. A system constantly failing is usually safer than a system inconsistently failing, so we could say the problem is worse with the growing inconsistency.

The key is to pause and gain perspective. What else is going on? What other symptoms are we seeing that we aren’t taking into account? Where, based on all of that, are the likely spots for the root cause to be occurring? How can we narrow things down / eliminate possible causes?

This doesn’t just work for work. It works for life, too. In the US military, this is an oft-taught concept. Former SEAL Jocko Willink would advise, “Relax. Look around. Make a call.” That “Relax. Look around,” is the instruction to take time and gain perspective.

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A collection of upcoming CFPs (call for papers) from across the internet and around the world.

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